Red Storm Rising

24. Rape

Morris didn't wave at the low-flying aircraft, but wanted to. The French Navy's patrol plane signaled that they were within range of land-based air cover. It would take a very brave Russian sub skipper to want to play games here, with a screen of French diesel subs a few miles north of the convoy lane and several ASW patrol aircraft forming a tricolored umbrella over the convoy.

The French had also sent out a helicopter to collect the Russian submariners. They were being flown to Brest for a full interrogation by NATO intelligence types. Morris didn't envy them the trip. They'd be held by the French, and he had no doubt that the French Navy was in an evil mood after the loss of one of its carriers. The tapes his crew had made of their conversations were also being sent. The Russians had talked among themselves, aided by the chiefs' liquor, and perhaps their whispered conversations had some value.

They were about to turn the convoy over to a mixed British-French escort force and take over a group of forty merchantmen bound for America. Morris stood on the bridge wing, turning every five minutes or so to look at the two half and one full silhouettes that the bosun had painted on both sides of the pilothouse-"No sense having some jerk on the wrong side of the ship missing them," the bosun had pointed out seriously. Their ASW tactics had worked fairly well. With Pharris as outlying sonar picket, and heavy support from the Orions, they had intercepted all but one of the inbound Russian subs. There had been a lot of skepticism on this point, but the tactic had worked, by God. But it had to work better still.

Morris knew that things would be getting harder. For the first trip the Soviets had been able to put no more than a fraction of their submarines into action against them. Those submarines were now forcing their way down the Denmark Strait. The NATO sub force trying to block the passage no longer had the SOSUS line to give them intercept vectors, nor Orions to pounce on the contacts that submarines could not reach. They would score kills, but would they score enough? How much larger would the threat be this week? Morris could see from their return route to the States that they were adding nearly five hundred miles to the passage by looping far to the south-partially because of the Backfires, but more now to dilute the submarine threat. Two threats to worry about. His ship was equipped to deal with only one.

They'd lost a third of the convoy, mainly to aircraft. Could they sustain that? He wondered how the merchant crews were holding up.

They had closed in on the convoy, and he could see the northernmost line of merchies. On the horizon a big container ship was blinking a light at them. Morris raised his glasses to read the signal.

THANKS FOR NOTHING NAVY. One question answered.

"So, there they are," McCafferty said.

The trace showed almost white on the screen, a thick spoke of broadband noise bearing three-two-nine. It could only be the Soviet task force heading for Bodo.

"How far out?" McCafferty asked.

"At least two CZs, skipper, maybe three. The signal just increased in intensity four minutes ago."

"Can you get a blade count on anything?"

"No, sir." The sonarman shook his head. "Just a lot of undifferentiated noise for the moment. We've tried to isolate a few discrete frequencies, but even that's all screwed up. Maybe later, but all we got now is a thundering herd."

McCafferty nodded. The third convergence zone was a good hundred miles off. At such ranges acoustical signals lost definition, to the point that their bearing to target was only a rough estimate. The Russian formation could be several degrees left or right of where they thought, and at this range that was a difference measured in miles. He went aft to Control.

"Take her west five miles at twenty knots," McCafferty ordered. It was a gamble, but a small one. On reaching station, they'd found unusually good water conditions, and the small move risked losing the contact temporarily. On the other hand, getting precise range information would give him a much better tactical picture and enable them to make a solid contact report-and make it by line-of-sight UHF radio before the Soviet formation got close enough that they could intercept the submarine's transmission. As the boat raced west, McCafferty watched the bathythermograph trace. As long as the temperature didn't change, he'd keep that good sound channel. It didn't. The submarine slowed rapidly and McCafferty went back to sonar.

"Okay, where are they now?"

"Got 'em! Right there, bearing three-three-two."

"XO, plot it and get a contact report made up."

Ten minutes later the report was sent via satellite. The reply ordered Chicago in: GO FOR THE HEAVIES.

The farm was three miles away, thankfully downhill through tall, rough grass. On first sighting it through binoculars, Edwards called it the Gingerbread House. A typical Icelandic farmhouse, it had white stucco walls buttressed by heavy wooden beams, a contrasting red-painted trim, and a steeply pitched roof right out of the Brothers Grimm. The outlying barns were large, but low-slung with sod-covered roofs. The lower meadows by the stream were dotted with hundreds of large, odd-looking sheep with massively thick coats of wool, asleep in the grass half a mile beyond the house.

"Dead-end road," Edwards said, folding up the map. "And we could use some food. Gentlemen, it's worth the chance, but we approach carefully. We'll follow this dip to the right and keep that ridgeline between us and the farm till we're within half a mile or so."

"Okay, sir," Sergeant Smith agreed. The four men struggled into a sitting position to don their gear yet again. They'd been moving almost continuously for two and a half days, and were now about thirty-five miles northeast of Reykjavik. A modest pace on flat roads, it was a mankilling effort cross country, particularly while staying watchful for the helicopters that were now patrolling the countryside. They had consumed their last rations six hours before. The cool temperatures and hard physical effort conspired to drain the energy from their bodies as they picked their way around and over the two-thousand-foot hills that dotted the Icelandic coast like so many fence pickets.

Several things kept them moving. One was the fear that the Soviet division they had watched airlifted in would expand its perimeter and snap them up. No one relished the thought of captivity under the Russians. But worse than this was fear of failure. They had a mission, and no taskmaster is harsher than one's own self-expectations. Then there was pride. Edwards had to set an example for his men, a principle remembered from Colorado Springs. The Marines, of course, could hardly let a "wing-wiper" outperform them. Thus, without thinking consciously about it, four men contrived to walk themselves into the ground, all in the name of pride.

"Gonna rain," Smith said.

"Yeah, the cover will be nice," Edwards said, still sitting back. "We'll wait for it. Jesus, I never thought working in daylight would be so Goddamned tough. There's just something weird about not having the friggin' sun go down."

"Tell me about it. And I ain't even got a cigarette," Smith growled.

"Rain again?" Private Garcia asked.

"Get used to it," Edwards said. "It rains seventeen days in June, on average, and so far this's been a wet year. How d'you think the grass got so tall?"

"You like this place?" Garcia asked, dumbfounded enough to forget the "sir." Iceland had little in common with Puerto Rico.

"My dad's a lobsterman working out of Eastpoint, Maine. When I was a kid I went out on the boat every time I could, and it was always like this."

"What we gonna do when we get down to that house, sir?" Smith brought them back to things that mattered.

"Ask for food-"

"Ask?" Garcia was surprised.

"Ask. And pay for it, with cash. And smile. And say, 'Thank you, sir,"' Edwards said. "Remember your manners, guys, unless you want him to phone Ivan ten minutes after we leave." He looked around at his men. The thought sobered them all.

The rain started with a few sprinkles. Two minutes later it was falling heavily, cutting visibility down to a few hundred yards. Edwards wearily got to his feet, forcing his Marines to do likewise, and they all moved downhill as the sun above the clouds dipped in the northwestern sky and slid down behind a hill. The hill-since they'd probably have to climb it the next day, they thought of it as a mountain-had a name, but none of them could pronounce it. By the time they were a quarter mile from the farmhouse, it was as dark as it would get, and the rain had the visibility down to about eighty yards.

"Car coming." Smith saw the glare of the lights first. All four men dropped and instinctively aimed their rifles at the dots on the horizon.

"Relax, guys. This road here breaks off the main road, and those lights could just be-shit!" Edwards cursed. The lights hadn't taken the sweeping turn on the coastal highway. They were coming down the road to the farm. Was it a car or a track with its driving lights on? "Spread out and stay awake." Smith stayed with Edwards, and the two privates moved downhill about fifty yards.

Edwards lay prone, his elbows propped up on the wet grass and binoculars to his eyes. He didn't think they could be spotted. The Marine pattern camouflage made them nearly invisible in daylight as long as they didn't move rapidly. In the dark they were transparent shadows.

"Looks like a pickup, four-by-four, something like that. Lights are pretty far off the ground, bouncing around too much to be a track," Edwards thought aloud.

The lights came directly-but slowly-to the farmhouse and stopped. Its doors opened, men got out, and one stepped in front of the headlights before they were extinguished.

"Damn!" Smith snarled.

"Yep, looks like four or five Ivans. Get Garcia and Rodgers over here, Sergeant."

"Right."

Edwards kept his binoculars on the house. There were no electric lights lit. He guessed that this area got its power from Artun, and he'd watched the bombs wipe that plant off the map. There was some internal illumination, though, maybe from candles or a hurricane lamp. It really was a lot like home, Edwards told himself, our electricity went off often enough, from nor'eastern storms or ice on the wires. The people in that house had to be asleep. Working farmers, early to bed, early to rise-wears you out and dulls the brain, Edwards thought. Through the lenses he watched the Russians-he counted five-circle the house. Like burglars, he thought. They looking for… us? No. If they were looking for us, there'd be more than five guys in a four-by-four. That's interesting. They must be looting-but what if somebody… Jesus, we know that somebody lives there. Somebody lit that lamp. What are they up to?

"What gives, sir?" Smith asked.

"Looks like we got five Russkies. They're playing peeper, looking in the windows and-one just kicked the door in! I don't like the way this is going, troops, I-"

A scream confirmed his evaluation. A woman's scream, it cut right through the falling rain and made them feel someone's terror, chilling men already cold.

"People, let's move in a little. We stay together and we damned well stay alert."

"Why we movin' in now, sir?'' Smith asked sharply.

"'Cuz I say so." Edwards stowed his field glasses. "Follow me."

Another light was lit in the building, and it seemed to be moving around. Edwards walked quickly, keeping low in a way that punished his back. In two minutes he was a few yards from the truck that had driven in, no more than twenty yards from the home's front door.

"Sir, you're getting a little careless," Smith warned.

"Yeah, well, if I guess right, so are they. I bet-"

There was a sound of breaking glass. A shot rang out through the semidarkness. It was followed by a blood-chilling shriek-and a second shot, and a third. Then there was another scream.

"What the hell's going on in there?" Garcia asked in a rasp.

A hoarse male voice shouted something in Russian. The front door opened and four men came out. They conferred for a moment, then split into pairs, going left and right to side windows, where all four men stood to look inside. Then there came another scream, and it was perfectly clear what was going on.

"Those son of a bitches," Smith observed.

"Yeah," Lieutenant Edwards agreed. "Let's back off and think about this for a minute." The four men retreated about fifty yards and bunched together.

"I think it's time we do something. Anybody disagree?" Edwards asked. Smith just nodded, interested in Edwards's change of demeanor.

"Okay, we take our time and do it right. Smith, you come with me and we go around the left. Garcia and Rodgers go around the right. Go wide and come in slow. Ten minutes. If you can take 'em alive, that's okay. If not, stick 'em. We try not to make noise. But if you gotta shoot, make Goddamned sure the first burst does it. Okay?" Edwards looked around for additional Russians. None. The four men slipped out of their packs, checked their watches, and moved out, crawling through the wet grass.

There was another scream, but none after that. Edwards was glad there weren't-he didn't need the distraction. The crawling was a slow, tiring effort that sapped the strength from his arms. Edwards and Smith took a long route, around a tractor and some other implements. When they came into the clear there was only one man on their side of the house. Where's the other one? the lieutenant asked himself. Now what do we do? You gotta stick to the plan. Everyone's depending on you.

"Back me up."

Smith was amazed. "Let me, sir, I-"

"Back me up," Edwards whispered. He set his M-16 down and drew his combat knife.

The Russian soldier made it easy, as he stood on tiptoe, entranced with the goings-on within the farmhouse. Ten feet behind him, Edwards got to his feet and approached one slow step at a time, It took him a moment to realize that his target was a full head taller than he was-how was he supposed to take this monster alive?

He didn't have to. There must have been an intermission inside. The Soviet private slumped down and reached in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, then turned slightly to light one from a cupped match. He caught Edwards out of the comer of his eye, and the American lieutenant lunged forward with his knife, stabbing the larger man in the throat. The Russian started to cry out, but Edwards wrestled him down and slapped his left hand over the man's mouth as he struck again with the knife. Edwards twisted the man's head one way, and the knife the other. The blade grated against something hard, and his victim went slack.

Edwards felt nothing, his emotions submerged in a flood of adrenaline. He wiped the knife on his trousers and stood on the man's body to look in the window. What he saw caught the breath in his throat.

"Hi, guys!" Garcia whispered. Two Russian privates turned to face a pair of M-16s. They had left their rifles in the truck. Garcia gestured at the ground with his rifle, and both men went facedown, spread-eagled.

Rodgers frisked them both for weapons, then went around the front to report in.

"Took 'em both alive, sir." He was surprised to see their "wing-wiper" lieutenant with blood on his hands.

"I'm going in," Edwards told Smith. The sergeant nodded quickly.

"I'll cover you from here. Rodgers, you back him up."

The lieutenant moved through the half-open door. The living room was empty and unlit. The noise of heavy breathing came from around the comer, and a steady pale light. Edwards approached the comer-and found himself faced with a Russian in the process of unbuttoning his pants. There was no time for much of anything.

Edwards rammed his knife under the man's ribs, turning his right hand within the brass-knuckled grip as he pushed the blade all the way in. The man screamed and lifted himself up on his toes before falling backward, trying to get himself off the knife. Edwards withdrew and stabbed again, falling atop the man in a grotesquely sexual position. The paratrooper's hands tried to force him off, but the lieutenant felt the strength drain from his victim as he moved farther forward to stab him again in the chest. A shadow moved and he looked up to see a man stumbling forward with a pistol-and the room exploded with noise.

"Freeze, motherficker!" Rodgers screamed, his M-16 aimed at the man's chest, and everyone's ears ringing from the thunder of the three round burst. "You okay, skipper?" It was the first time they had called him that.

"Yeah." Edwards got to his feet, letting Rodgers precede him as he backed the Russian up. The man was exposed below the waist, his pants hobbling his ankles. The lieutenant picked up the pistol the Soviet had dropped and looked down at the man he'd knifed. There was no doubt that he was dead. His handsome Slavic face was contorted with surprise and pain, and his uniform blouse was soaked black with blood. The eyes might have been marbles for all the life they contained.

"You okay, ma'am?" Rodgers asked, briefly turning his head around.

Edwards saw her for the second time, sprawled out on the wooden floor. A pretty girl, her woolen nightdress torn apart, barely covering one breast, and the rest of her pale body, already red and bruised in several places, exposed for all to see. Beyond her in the kitchen Edwards saw the unmoving legs of another woman. He went into the room and saw a dog and a man, also dead. Each body displayed a single red circle in the chest

Smith came in. He looked around the room, then at Edwards. The wimp had fangs. "I'll check the upstairs. Heads up, skipper."

Rodgers kicked the Russian down to the floor and placed his bayonet point in the small of his back. "You move and I'll fuckin' cut you in half," the private snarled.

Edwards stooped down to the blond girl. Her face was puffing up from blows to the jaw and cheek, her breath coming in shudders. He guessed her age at twenty or so. Her nightdress was destroyed. Edwards looked around and, pulling the cloth off the dining room table, draped it over her.

"You okay? Come on, you're alive, honey. You're safe. You're okay now."

Her eyes seemed pointed in different directions at first, then they focused and came over to the young lieutenant. Edwards cringed to see the look in them. His hand touched her cheek as gently as he could.

"Come on, let's get you up off the floor. Nobody's going to hurt you, not now." She started shaking so violently that it seemed the whole house would join her. He helped her up, careful to wrap the tablecloth all around her. "Come on."

"Upstairs is clear, sir." Smith returned, holding a robe. "You wanna put this on the lady? They do anything else to her?"

"Killed her mom and dad. And a dog. I imagine they were going to do her, too, when they got finished. Sarge, get things organized. Search the Russians, get some food, anything else that looks useful. Move quick, Jim. Lots of things we gotta do. You have a first-aid pack?"

"Right, skipper. Here." Smith tossed him a small package of bandages and antiseptics, then went back out the door to check on Garcia.

"Let's get you upstairs and cleaned off." Edwards wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and helped her up the steep old wooden steps. His heart went out to the girl. She had china-blue eyes, obscenely empty of life though even now they caught the light in a way certain to attract any man's attention. As they just had, Edwards thought. She was only an inch shorter than he, with pale, almost transparent skin. Her figure was marred by a slight bulge at the abdomen, and Mike had a good idea what that was, the rest of her figure was so perfect. And she'd just been raped by one Russian, paving the way for a long night of it, Mike Edwards thought, enraged that once more this foul crime had touched his fife. There was a small room at the top of the twisting stairs. She entered it and sat on the single bed.

"Wh-wh-who-' she stammered in accented English.

"We're Americans. We escaped from Keflavik when the Russians attacked. What's your name?"

"Vigdis Agustdottir." The slightest sign of life in her voice. Vigdis, the daughter of Agust, dead in the kitchen. He wondered what Vigdis meant, sure that it wasn't pretty enough.

He set the hurricane lamp on the night table and broke open the pack. Her skin was broken along the jawline, and he swabbed disinfectant there. It had to hurt, but the girl didn't wince at all. The rest of her, he'd seen, was just bruised, maybe some scrapes on her back from the hardwood floor. She'd fought hard to defend herself, and taken a dozen punches. And certainly she was no virgin. Just a bloodied face. It could have been far worse, but Edwards's rage continued to grow. Such a pretty face desecrated-well, he'd already reached that decision. "You can't stay here. We have to leave soon. You'll have to leave, too."

"But-"

"I'm sorry. I understand-I mean, when the Russians attacked, I lost some friends, too. Not the same as your mom and dad, but-Jesus!" Edwards's hands shook in frustration as he stumbled through the meaningless words. "I'm sorry we didn't get here sooner." What is it that some of the feminists say? That rape is the crime that all men use to subjugate all women? Then why do you want to go downstairs and-Edwards knew that something almost as satisfying was in the works. He took her hand and she didn't resist. "We're going to have to leave. We'll take you anywhere we can. You must have family around here, or friends. We'll take you to them and they can take care of you. But you can't stay here. If you stay here, you're sure to get killed. Do you understand?" He saw her head nod jerkily in the shadows.

"Yes. Please-please leave me alone. I must be alone for a little."

"Okay." He touched her cheek again. "If you need anything, call us." Edwards went back downstairs. Smith had taken charge. There were three men on their knees, blindfolded, gagged, and hands tied behind their backs. Garcia was standing over them. Rodgers was in the kitchen. Smith was sorting through a pile of stuff on the table.

"Okay, what d'we got here?"

Smith regarded his officer with something akin to affection. "Well, Sir, we got us a Russian lieutenant with a wet dick. A dead sergeant. A dead private, and two live ones. The lieutenant had this, sir."

Edwards took the map and unfolded it. "Damn, ain't that nice!" The map was covered with scribbled markings.

"We got another set of binoculars, a radio-shame we can't use that! Some rations. Looks like shit, but better'n nothin'. We done good, skipper. Bag five Russians with three rounds expended."

"What do we need to take, Jim?"

"Just food, sir. I mean, we could take a couple of their rifles, and that'd double up our ammo load, y'know? But we're already loaded pretty, heavy-"

"And we aren't here to fight a war, just to play scout. Right."

"I think we oughta take some clothes, sweaters and like that. We taking the lady with us?"

"Have to."

Smith nodded. "Yeah, makes sense. Hope she likes walkin', sir. Looks like she's in decent shape, 'cept for being pregnant. Four months, I'd say."

"Pregnant?" Garcia turned. "Rapin' a pregnant girl?" He muttered something in Spanish.

"Any of them say anything?" Mike asked.

"Not a word, sir." Garcia answered.

"Jim, take a look at the girl, and get her down here. Her name's Vigdis. Easy on her."

"Don't worry, sir." Smith went upstairs.

"The lieutenant's the one with it hanging out, right?" Garcia nodded and Edwards went around to face him. He had to remove the gag and blindfold. The man was his own age. He was sweating. "You speak English?"

The man shook his head. "Spreche deutsch.

Edwards had taken two years of German in high school, but suddenly found himself unwilling to talk with this man. He had already decided to kill him, and he didn't wish to speak with someone he was about to kill-it might bother his conscience. Edwards didn't want his conscience to remember this. But he watched the man for a minute or two, examining what sort of person would do what he had done. He expected to discover something monstrous, but didn't. He looked up. Smith was leading Vigdis down the stairs.

"She's got good gear, skipper. Nice warm clothes, her boots are all broke in. I expect we can get her a canteen, a parka, and a field pack. I'd let her bring a brush an' girl stuff, sir. I'll get us some soap, too, and maybe a razor."

"Way to go, Sergeant. Vigdis," Edwards said, getting her attention. "We will be leaving soon." He turned to look back down at the Russian:

"Leutnant. Wofur? Warum?" What for-why did you do all this? Not for me. For her.

The man knew what was coming. He shrugged. "Afghanistan."

"Skipper, they're prisoners," Rodgers blurted. "I mean, sir, you can't-"

"Gentlemen, you are charged under Uniform Code of Military Justice with one specification of rape and two specifications of murder. These are capital crimes," Edwards said, mainly so that he could assuage his conscience for the other two. "Do you have anything to say in your defense? No? You are found guilty. Your sentence is death." With his left hand, Edwards pushed the lieutenant's head back. His right hand flipped the knife into the air, reversing it; then he swung it viciously, striking the man's larynx with the pommel. The sound was surprisingly loud in the room, and Edwards kicked him backward.

A terrible thing to watch, it lasted several minutes. The lieutenant's larynx was instantly fractured, and its swelling blocked his trachea. Unable to breathe, his torso bucked from side to side as his face darkened. Everyone in the room who could see watched. If any felt pity for the man, none showed it. Finally he stopped moving.

"I'm sorry we weren't faster, Vigdis, but this thing won't be hurting anyone else." Edwards hoped that his amateur psychiatry would work. The girl went back upstairs, probably to wash, he thought. He'd read that after being raped one thing women wanted to do was bathe, as though there were a visible stigma from being the victim of an animal's lust. He turned toward the remaining two. There was no way they could manage prisoners, and what they had been up to merely provided him with a good excuse. But these two hadn't hurt the girl yet, and-

"I'll take care of it, sir," Garcia said quietly. The private was standing behind the kneeling prisoners. One of them was making some noise, but even if he hadn't been gagged, none of the Americans knew a word of Russian. They had no chance at all. Garcia stabbed from the side, sticking his knife completely through one neck, then the other. Both men fell. It was over quickly. The private and the lieutenant went into the kitchen to wash their hands.

"Okay, we load them back into the four-by-four and drive it back to the main road. We'll see if we can fake an accident and torch the vehicle. Get some liquor bottles. We'll make it look like they were drinking."

"They were, sir." Rodgers held up a bottle of clear liquor.

Edwards gave the bottle a brief look, but shook off the thought. "Figures. If I guess right, these guys were the crossroads guards from the main highway-or maybe just a patrol. I don't think they can guard every crossroads on this island. If we're just a little lucky, maybe their bosses'll never figure out we were involved in this." A long shot, he thought, but what the hell?

"Skipper," Smith said. "If you want to do that, we gotta-"

"I know. You and Rodgers stay here and get ready. If you see anything else we can use, pack it up. When we get back, we'll have to haul ass."

Edwards and Garcia loaded all the bodies into the back of the truck, careful to sort through the battle gear. They unloaded waterproof parkas whose camouflage pattern was almost identical with their own and a few other items that wouldn't be missed, then drove off quickly down the road.

Luck was with them. There was no permanent guard post at the crossroads, perhaps because the farm road led nowhere. The Russians had probably been a patrol team, and had chosen the farm for a little informal R amp;R. Two hundred yards down the coastal highway the road paralleled a steep cliff. They halted the vehicle there and manhandled the bodies into the seats. Garcia emptied a jerrican of gasoline into the back and the two men pushed it toward the edge with the rear hatch open. Garcia tossed a Russian grenade into the back as it went over the edge. Neither man wanted to admire their handiwork. They ran back the half mile to the farmhouse. Everything was ready.

"We have to bum the house, Miss Vigdis," Smith was explaining. "If we don't, the Russians'll know for sure what happened here. Your mom and dad are dead, ma'am, but I'm sure they'd want you to stay alive, Okay?"

She was still too much in shock to offer more than token resistance. Rodgers and Smith had cleaned off the bodies, and moved them upstairs to their own bedroom. It would have been better to bury them, but there just wasn't time.

"Let's get moving, people," Edwards ordered. They should have been moving already. Somebody had to be coming to investigate the burning truck, and if they used a chopper… "Garcia, you watch the lady. Smith has the rear. Rodgers, take the point. We have to put six miles between us and this place in the next three hours."

Smith waited ten minutes before tossing his grenade into the house. The kerosene he'd spread on the first floor went up at once.

The contact was a lot better now. They had classified one ship as a Kashin-class missile destroyer, and her propeller-blade count indicated a speed of twenty-one knots. The leading elements of the Soviet formation were now thirty-seven miles away. There seemed to be two groups, the leading formation fanned out and screening the second. McCafferty ordered the ESM mast raised. It showed lots of activity, but he expected that.

"Up scope." The quartermaster worked the operating ring, then snapped the handles into place and stepped back. McCafferty swept the horizon quickly. After ten seconds, he flipped the handles up, and the periscope was instantly lowered back into its well.

"It's going to be a busy day, troops," the captain said; he always let the attack center crew know as much of what was going on as possible. The more they knew, the better they could do their jobs. "I saw a pair of Bear-Fs, one due north, the other west. Both a good way off, but you can bet they're dropping sonobuoys. XO, take her back down to five hundred feet, speed five knots. We'll let them come to us."

"Conn, sonar."

"Conn, aye," McCafferty answered.

"We got some pingers, active sonobuoys to the northwest. We count six of them, all very faint." The sonar chief read off the bearings to the signal sources. "Still no active sonar signals coming from the target formation, sir."

"Very well." McCafferty returned the mike to its holder. Chicago's depth was changing quickly, as they dove at a fifteen-degree angle. He watched the bathythermograph readout. At two hundred twenty feet the water temperature began to drop rapidly, changing twelve degrees inside of seventy feet. Good, a strong layer to hide under, and cold water deep to allow good sonar performance for his own sensors.

Two hours before he had removed a torpedo from one of his tubes and replaced it with a Harpoon missile. It gave him only one torpedo ready for instant use if he found a submarine target, but a salvo of three missiles available to fling at surface ships, plus his Tomahawks. He could fire either now, and expect hits, but McCafferty didn't want to fire at just anything. There was no sense wasting a missile on a small patrol craft when there was a cruiser and a carrier out there waiting for him. He wanted to identify specific targets first. It wouldn't be easy, but he knew that easy things didn't have to be done by the 688-class subs. He went forward into sonar.

The chief caught him out the comer of his eye. "Skipper, I may have a bearing to Kirov. I just copied six pings from a low-frequency sonar. I think that's him, bearing zero-three-nine. Trying to isolate his engine signature now. And if-okay, some more sonobuoys are dropping to the right." The display showed new points of light well to the right of the first string, and a sizable gap between the two.

"Think he's dropping them in chevrons, Chief?" McCafferty asked. He got a smile and a nod for an answer. If the Soviets were deploying their sonobuoys in angled lines left and right of the formation, that could mean that their ships were heading right for Chicago. The submarine would not have to maneuver at all to intercept them. She could stay as quiet as an open grave.

"They seem to be alternating them above and below the layer, sir. A pretty fair gap between them, too." The chief lit a cigarette without averting his eyes from the screen. The ashtray next to him was crammed with butts.

"We'll plot that one out. Good work, Barney." The captain patted his sonar chief on the shoulder and went back to the attack center. The firecontrol tracking party was already plotting the new contacts. It looked like an interval of just over two miles between the sonobuoys. If the Soviets were alternating them above and below the layer, there was a good chance he could sneak between a pair. The other question was the presence of passive buoys, whose presence he could not detect.

McCafferty stood at the periscope pedestal, watching his men at work as they entered data into the fire-control computers, backed up by other men with paper plots and hand-held calculators. The weapons-control panel was lit up by indicators showing ready. The submarine was at battle stations.

"Take her up to two hundred feet, we'll listen above the layer for a few minutes." The maneuver paid off at once.

"I got direct-path to the targets," the sonar chief announced. They could now detect and track sound energy radiating directly from the Soviet ships, without depending on the on-again, off-again convergence zones.

McCafferty commanded himself to relax. He'd soon have work enough.

"Captain, we're about due for another sonobuoy drop. They've been averaging about every fifteen minutes, and this one might be close."

"Getting that Horse-Jaw sonar again, sir," sonar warned. "Bearing three-two-zero at this time. Signal weak. Classify this contact as the cruiser Kirov. Stand by-another one. We have a medium frequency active sonar bearing three-three-one, maneuvering left-to-right. We classify this contact as a Kresta-II ASW cruiser."

"I think he's right," the plotting officer said. "Bearing three-two-zero is close to our bearings for a pair of screen ships, but far enough off that it's probably a different contact. Three-three-one is consistent with the center screen ship. It figures. The Kresta will be the screen commander, with the flagship a ways behind him. Need some time to work out the ranges, though."

The captain ordered his submarine to stay above the layer, able to duck beneath it in seconds. The tactical display was evolving now. He had a workable bearing on Kirov. Almost good enough to shoot on, though he still needed range data. There seemed to be a pair of escorts between him and the cruiser, and unless he had a proper range estimate, any missile he launched at the Soviet flagship might attack a destroyer or frigate by mistake. In the interim, the solution on the attack director set the Harpoons to fly straight for what he believed to be the battle cruiser Kirov.

Chicago began to zigzag left and right of her course track. As the submarine changed her position, the bearing to her sonar contacts changed also. The tracking party could use the submarine's own course deviation as a baseline to compute ranges to the various contacts. A straightforward process-essentially an exercise in high-school trigonometry-it nevertheless took time because they had to estimate the speed and course of the moving targets. Even computer support couldn't make the process go much faster, and one of his quartermasters took great pride in his ability to use a circular slide rule and race the computer to a hard solution.

The tension seemed to grow by degrees, then it plateaued. The years of training were paying off. Data was handled, plotted, and acted upon in seconds. The crew suddenly seemed a physical part of the gear they were operating, their feelings shut off, their emotions submerged, only the sweat on their foreheads betraying that they were men after all, and not machines. They depended absolutely on their sonar operators. Sound energy was their only indication of what was happening, and each new bearing report triggered furious activity. It was clear that their targets were zigzagging, which made the range computations even more difficult.

"Conn, sonar! Active sonobuoy close aboard to port! Below the layer, I think."

"Right full rudder, all ahead two-thirds," the executive officer ordered instantly.

McCafferty went to sonar and plugged in a set of headphones. The pings were loud but… distorted, he thought. If the buoy was below the temperature gradient, the signals radiating upward would be unable to detect his submarine-probably. "Signal strength?" he asked.

"Strong," the chief replied. "Even money they might have picked us up. Five hundred yards farther out and they lose us for sure."

"Okay, they can't monitor them all at once."

The XO moved Chicago a thousand yards before returning to base course. Overhead, they knew, was a Bear-F ASW aircraft armed with homing torpedoes and a crew whose job it was to listen to the sonobuoy signals. How good were the buoys and the men? That was one thing that they didn't know. Three tense minutes passed and nothing happened.

"All ahead one-third, come left to three-two-one," the executive officer ordered. They were now through the line of buoys. Three more such lines were between them and their target. They'd nearly determined range for three of the escorts, but not to the Kirov yet.

"Okay, people, the Bears are behind us. That's one less thing to worry about. Range to the nearest ship?" he asked the approach officer.

"Twenty-six thousand yards. We think he's a Sovremenny. The Kresta is about five thousand yards east of him. He's pinging away with hull and VDS sonars." McCafferty nodded. The variable-depth sonar would be below the layer and had scant chance of detecting them. The hull sonar they'd have to pay attention to, but it wouldn't be a problem for a while yet. Okay, the captain thought, things are going pretty much according to the plan-

"Conn, sonar, torpedoes in the water, bearing three-two-zero! Signal faint. Say again torpedoes in the water, three-two-zero, bearing changing ―additional, lots of active sonars just lit up. We're getting increased screw noises for all contacts." McCafferty was in the sonar room before the report ended.

"Torpedo bearing change?"

"Yes! Moving left-to-right-Jesus, I think somebody's attacking the Russians. Impact!" The chief jabbed his finger at the display. A series of three bright spokes appeared right on the bearing to Kirov. The display suddenly went berserk. The high-and medium-frequency segment lit up with active sonar lines. The lines indicating ships became brighter as the ships increased engine speeds and changed direction as they began to maneuver.

"Secondary explosion on this contact-holy shit! Lots of explosions in the water now. Depth charges, maybe, something's really ripping the water up. There's another torpedo-way off, bearing changing right to left."

The display was now too complex for McCafferty to follow. The chief expanded the time scale to allow easier interpretation, but only he and his experienced operators could understand it.

"Skipper, it looks like somebody just got inside on them and launched an attack. He got three solid hits on Kirov, and now they're trying to beat on him. These two ships appear to be converging on something. Another torpedo in the water, don't know whose. Gawd, look at all these explosions!"

McCafferty went aft.

"Periscope depth, now!" Chicago angled upward, taking a minute to reach her position.

He saw what might have been a mast on the horizon, and a column of black smoke, bearing three-two-zero. Over twenty radars were operating along with a number of voice radios.

"Down scope. We have any target solutions?"

"No, sir," the XO answered. "When they started maneuvering, all our data went to hell."

"How far to the next sonobuoy line?"

"Two miles. We're positioned to run right through a gap."

"Make your depth eight hundred feet. Ahead full, move us in."

Chicago's engines sprang into life, accelerating the submarine to thirty knots. The executive officer dived the boat to eight hundred feet, ducking deep below a sonobuoy set for shallow search. McCafferty stood over the chart table, took a pen from his pocket, and unconsciously began chewing on the plastic end as he watched his sub's course take him closer and closer to the enemy formation. Sonar performance dropped virtually to nil with the high speed, but soon the low-frequency sounds of the exploding ordnance echoed through the steel hull. Chicago ran for twenty minutes, zigzagging slightly to avoid the Russian sonobuoys, as the firecontrol men kept updating their solutions.

"Okay, all ahead one-third and take her back up to periscope depth," McCafferty said. "Tracking party, stand by for a firing run."

The sonar picture cleared up rapidly. The Soviets were continuing to hunt frantically for whoever had fired at their flagship. One ship's trace was entirely gone-at least one Russian ship had been sunk or crippled. Explosions rippled through the water, punctuated by the screeing sound of homing torpedoes. All were close enough to be a matter of real concern.

"Shooting observation. Up scope!"

The search periscope slid upward. McCafferty caught it low and swept the horizon. "I-Jesus!" The TV monitor showed a Bear only half a mile to their right, heading north for the formation. He could see seven ships, mainly mast tops, but one Sovremenny-class destroyer was hull-down, perhaps four miles away. The smoke he'd seen before was gone. The water resounded with the noise of Russian sonars.

"Raise the radar, power-up, and stand by."

A petty officer pushed the button to raise the submarine's surface-search radar, activated the system, but kept it in standby mode.

"Energize and give me two sweeps," the captain ordered. There was a real danger here. The Soviets would almost certainly detect the submarine's radar and try to attack it.

The radar was on for a total of twelve seconds. It "painted" a total of twenty-six targets on the screen, two of them close together about where he would have expected Kirov to be. The radar operator read off ranges and bearing, which were entered into the Mk-117 fire-control director and relayed to the Harpoon missiles in the torpedo tubes, giving them bearing to target and the range at which to switch on their seeker-heads. The weapons officer checked his status lights, then selected the two most promising targets for the missiles.

"Set!"

"Flood tubes." McCafferty watched the weapons-panel operator go through the launch sequence. "Opening outer doors."

"Solution checked and valid," the weapons officer said calmly. "Firing sequence: two, one, three."

"Shoot!" McCafferty ordered.

"Fire two." The submarine shuddered as the powerful impulse of high-pressure air ejected the weapon from the tube, followed by the whoosh of water entering the void. "Fire one… fire three. Two, one, and three fired, sir. Torpedo tube doors are shut, pumping out to reload."

"Reload with Mark-48s. Prepare to fire Tomahawks!" McCafferty said. The fire-control men switched the attack director over to activate the bow-mounted missiles.

"Up scope!" The quartermaster spun the control wheel. McCafferty let it come all the way up. He could see the smoke trail of the last Harpoon, and right behind it… McCafferty slapped the periscope handles up and stepped back. "Helix heading in! Take her down, all ahead flank!" The submarine raced downward. A Soviet antisub helicopter had seen the missile launch and was racing in at them. "Left full rudder."

"Left full rudder, aye!"

"Passing through one hundred feet. Speed fifteen knots," the XO reported.

"There he is," McCafferty said. The pings from the helicopter's active sonar reverberated through the hull. "Reverse your rudder. Shoot off a noisemaker." The captain ordered his submarine back to an easterly course and reduced speed as they dropped through the layer. With luck the Soviets would mistake the noisemaker for the cavitation noises of the submarine and attack it as Chicago drew clear.

"Conn, sonar, we have a destroyer heading in, bearing three-three-nine. Sounds like a Sovremenny-torpedo in the water aft. We have one torpedo in the water bearing two-six-five."

"Right twenty degrees rudder. All ahead two-thirds. Come to new course one-seven-five."

"Conn, sonar, new contact, twin screws, just started with a low-frequency sonar, probably a Udaloy, blade count says twenty-five knots, bearing three-five-one and constant. Torpedo bearing changing, heading aft and fading."

"Very well." McCafferty nodded. "The helicopter dropped on the noisemaker. We don't have to sweat that one. All ahead one-third, make your depth one thousand feet."

The Sovremenny he didn't worry too greatly about, but the Udaloy was another thing entirely. The new Soviet destroyer carried a low-frequency sonar that could penetrate the layer under certain conditions, plus two helicopters and a long-range rocket-boosted torpedo weapon that was better than the American ASROC.

Ba-wah! The sound of a low-frequency sonar. It had hit them on the first shot. Would it report Chicago's position to the Udaloy? Or would the submarine's rubber coating prevent it?

"Target bearing three-five-one. Blade count is down, indicates speed of ten knots," sonar reported.

"Okay, he's slowed to search for us. Sonar, how strong was that ping?"

"Low edge of detection range, sir. Probably did not get a return off us. Contact is maneuvering, bearing now three-five-three. Continuing to ping, but his sonar is search-lighting west-to-east away from us. Another helo is pinging, sir, bearing zero-nine-eight. This one's below the layer, but fairly weak."

"XO, take us west. We'll try to loop around them to seaward and approach their amphibs from the west." McCafferty returned to the sonar room. He was tempted to engage the Udaloy, but could not launch a torpedo this deep without using a dangerously high amount of his reserve high-pressure air. Besides, his job was to kill the command ships, not the escorts. His fire-control team set up a solution anyway in case killing the Russian destroyer became a necessity.

"God, what a mess," the chief breathed. "The depth-charging up north has tapered off some. Bearing is steadying down on these contacts here. Either they've resumed their base course or they're heading away. Can't tell which. Uh-oh, more sonobuoys are dropping down." The chief's finger traced the new dots, in a steady line-heading toward Chicago. "Next one's going to be real close, sir."

McCafferty stuck his head into the attack center. "Bring her around south, and go to two-thirds."

The next sonobuoy splashed into the water directly overhead. Its cable deployed the transducer below the layer and began automatic pinging.

"They got us for sure, skipper!'

McCafferty ordered a course change to the west and again increased to full speed to clear the area. Three minutes later a torpedo dropped into the water, either dropped by the Bear or fired from the Udaloy, they couldn't tell. The torpedo started searching for them from a mile off and turned away. Again their rubber anechoic coating had saved them. A helo's dipping sonar was detected ahead of them. McCafferty went south to avoid it, knowing that he was being driven away from the Soviet fleet, but unable to do much about it at the moment. A pair of helicopters was now after him, and for a submarine to defeat two dipping sonars was no simple exercise. It was clear that their mission was not so much to find him as to drive him off, and he could not maneuver fast enough to get past them. After two hours of trying, he broke off for the last time. The Soviet force had moved beyond sonar range, their last reported course being southeast toward Andoya.

McCafferty swore to himself He'd done everything right, gotten through the outer Soviet defenses, and had had a clear idea of how to duck under the destroyer screen. But someone had gotten there first, probably attacked Kirov-his target! — and messed everything up for his approach. His three Harpoons had probably found targets unless Ivan had shot them down-but he'd been unable even to monitor their impacts. If they had made impacts. The captain of USS Chicago wrote up his contact report for transmission to COMSUBLANT and wondered why things were going the way they were.

"A long way to go," the fighter pilot said.

"Yeah," Toland agreed. "Our last report had the group heading southeast to evade a submarine attack. We figure they're back to a southerly course now, but we don't know where they are. The Norwegians sent their last RF-5 in to look, and it disappeared. We have to hit them before they get to Bodo. To hit them, we need to know where they are."

"No satellite intel?"

"Nope."

"Okay. I go in with the reconnaissance pod, out and back… four hours. I'll need a tanker to top me off about three hundred miles out."

"No problem," the RAF group captain agreed. "Do be careful, we need all your Tomcats to escort the strike tomorrow."

"I'll be ready in an hour." The pilot left.

"Wish you luck, old boy," the group captain said quietly. This was the third attempt to locate the Soviet invasion force by air. After the Norwegian reconnaissance aircraft had disappeared, the Brits had tried with a Jaguar. That, too, had vanished. The most obvious solution was to send a Hawkeye with the strike to conduct a radar search, but the Brits weren't letting the E-2s stray too far from their shore. The U.K. radar stations had taken a fearful pounding, and the Hawkeyes were needed for local defense.

"It's not supposed to be this hard," Toland observed. Here was a golden opportunity to pound the Soviet fleet. Once located, they could strike the force at dawn tomorrow. The NATO aircraft would swoop in with their own air-to-surface missiles. But the extreme range of the mission gave no time for the strike force to loiter around looking. They had to have a target location before they took off. The Norwegians were supposed to have handled this, but NATO plans had not anticipated the virtual annihilation of the Royal Norwegian Air Force in a week's time. The Soviets had enjoyed their only major tactical successes at sea, and they were successes indeed, Toland thought. While the land war in Germany was heading toward a high-technology stalemate, up to now the vaunted NATO navies had been outmaneuvered and outthought by their supposed dullard Soviet adversaries. Taking Iceland had been a masterpiece of an operation. NATO was still scrambling to reestablish the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom barrier with submarines that were supposed to have other missions. The Russian Backfires were ranging far into the North Atlantic, hitting one convoy a day, and the main Russian submarine force hadn't even gotten there yet. The combination of the two might just close the Atlantic, Toland thought. Then the NATO armies would surely lose, for all their brilliant performance to date.

They had to stop the Soviets from taking Bodo in Norway. Once emplaced there, Russian aircraft could attack Scotland, draining resources from the German front and hampering efforts to interdict the bomber forces heading into the Atlantic. Toland shook his head. Once the Russian force was located, they'd pound hell out of it. They had the right weapons, the right doctrine. They could launch their missiles outside the Russian SAM envelopes, just as Ivan was doing to convoys. It was about time things changed.

The tanker lifted off first, followed half an hour later by the fighter. Toland and his British counterpart sat in the intelligence center napping, oblivious to the teletype printer that chattered in the comer. If anything important came in, the junior watch officers would alert them, and senior officers needed their sleep, too.

"Huh?" Toland started when the man n tapped his shoulder.

"Coming in, sir-your Tomcat is arriving, Commander." The RAF sergeant handed Bob a cup of tea. "Fifteen minutes out. Thought you might wish to freshen up."

"Thanks, Sergeant." Toland ran a hand over his unshaven face and decided not to shave. The group captain did, mainly to preserve the look that went with an RAF mustache.

The F-14 came in gracefully, its engines idling and wings outstretched as though grateful for the chance for a landing on something larger than a carrier. The pilot taxied into a hard shelter and quickly dismounted. Technicians were already removing the film cartridge from the camera pod.

"Nothing on their fleet, guys," he said at once. The radar-intercept officer came down behind him.

"God, there's fighters up there!" The RIO said. "Haven't seen so much activity since the last time we went through aggressor school."

"And I got one of the bastards, too. But no joy on the fleet. We covered the coast from Orland to Skagen before we turned back, not one surface ship visible."

"You're certain?" the group captain asked.

"You can check my film, Captain. No visual sightings, nothing on infrared, no radar emissions but airborne stuff-nothing, but lots of fighters. We started finding those just south of Stokke and counted-what was it, Bill?"

"Seven flights, mainly MiG-23s, I think. We never got a visual, but we picked up a lot of High Lark radars. One guy got a little close and I had to pop him with a Sparrow. We saw the flash. That was a hard kill. In any case, guys, our friends ain't coming to Bodo unless it's by submarine-"

"You turned back at Skagen?"

"Ran out of film, and we were low on fuel. The fighter opposition really started picking up north of Bodo. If you want a guess, we need to check out Andoya, but we need something else to do it, SR-71 maybe. I don't think I can get in and out of there except on burner. I'd have to tank right close to there even to try that, and-like I said, lots of fighters were operating there."

"Hardly matters," the group captain said. "Our aircraft haven't the legs for a strike that far without massive tanker support, and most of our tankers are committed elsewhere."